Glenn Greenwald on Indefinite Detention

The Washington Post reports that roughly 75 terrorist suspects may remain under U.S. detention indefinitely and without trial, a
continuation of Bush-era policies that have infuriated
civil libertarians. Salon's Glenn Greenwald, a civil rights lawyer by
training, connects the move to President Obama's much-touted decision to try
Khaleid Shaikh Mohammed and other terrorists in federal courts in New
York City. Greenwald has long called for civilian trials of
terrorists, which he, like Obama, says will demonstrate the virtue of the legal system. But Greenwald asks, is that
system and the good we hope to do with terrorist trials still
legitimate when we permanently detain 75 suspects without trial?

During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday,
[Attorney General] Eric Holder struggled all day to justify his decision to put Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to
invoke. He can't possibly defend the sanctity of jury trials in our
political system -- the most potent argument justifying what he did --
since he's the same person who is simultaneously denying trials
to Guantanamo detainees by sending them to military commissions and
even explicitly promising that some of them will be held without
charges of any kind.

Once you endorse the notion that the Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any battlefield
without giving them trials -- as the Obama administration is doing
explicitly and implicitly -- what convincing rationale can anyone offer
to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in
New York? If you're taking the position that military commissions and
even indefinite detention are perfectly legitimate tools to imprison
people -- as Holder has done -- then what is the answer to the Right's
objections that Mohammed himself belongs in a military commission? If
the administration believes Omar Khadr belongs in a military
commission, and if they believe others can be held indefinitely without
any charges, why isn't that true of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? By denying
jury trials to a large number of detainees, Obama officials have
completely gutted their own case for why they did the right thing in
giving Mohammed a trial in New York.

Greenwald's strong belief in civil liberties compels him to see such compromises as self-defeating and
hypocritical. That he holds the Obama administration, and himself, to
such a high standard demonstrates that Greenwald is the most dedicated civil libertarian among pundits.